A/R management is important to ensure smooth revenue inflow to your practice. There are certain steps you can take to ensure that your accounts receivable are managed well. Here are some tips that will help you in A/R management.
- You need to be constantly on the alert as regards any billing issues in your practice.
- Identify rejected claims in a timely manner and have a daily report made on them. In this way you will be able to spot billing issues more easily.
- Do not write off denied claims. Make it a point to appeal denied claims because there is a chance that you may get reimbursement for them. You can make enquiries why the claim was denied, and can support your claim with valid clinical notes and payer policies.
- Find out reasons for claim denials and learn from your mistakes. Your in-house billing staff must be alerted in this regard.
- You must ensure that you are submitting clean claims. There is a chance that patient names, date of birth, policy number and such details may have been erroneously entered.
- Make sure that you have a list of all denied claims and review these on a monthly basis. Consider the measures taken to recover reimbursement. It is important that your staff members take appropriate steps to secure the highest returns on claims submitted.
- You should ideally have a good policy for write-off adjustments. Decide what types of claims can be written off, and when; and who can approve the write-offs.
If systematic A/R management is a difficult proposition for you, entrust the work to a competent medical billing company. Usually, reputable companies have an organized system of following up on unpaid claims and ensuring maximum payment to their clients. On your part, you must provide accurate information to enable the billing company to process medical claims quickly and flawlessly. With a good partnering company, you can easily have the major portion of your A/R paid within 30 days of the date of service.
Holding a CPC certification from the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC), Natalie is a seasoned professional actively managing medical billing, medical coding, verification, and authorization services at OSI.